Brilliant, Ridiculous Reid
by spitfire00
Summary: After witnessing the effect burning fish guts has on Reid, Rossi corners Hotch and learns just what happened to Reid years ago at the hands of Tobias Hankel.


The topic first comes up during a case. A sadistic rapist called into a local police department, announcing that he'd left another body in a fish cannery, but to hurry if they wanted any evidence because he had also lit it on fire. For some reason the call annoys Rossi- he doesn't necessarily wish to deal with an egotistical murderer, but even so it will be more exciting than the piles of paperwork that had previously captured his attention back at the office.

When they arrive in Ohio the building is still being eaten by flames, sending billows of dark black smoke into the bright sky, warning any stragglers not to come too close or to face the wrath of the chemicals being burned within. The smell is atrocious, a mix of rotting guts and burning dead fish that makes even Rossi's veteran stomach flip at the stench. He stepped out of the car with Morgan and Reid, and he can see Hotch and Prentiss emerging towards them in his peripheral vision. The gravel beneath their feet crunches as they head towards the flopping police tape keeping a nonexistent crowd at bay.

Rossi saw Reid stop in their walking towards the scene, and turned to see what had caught his colleague's attention. Reid had a tendency to see things from a different perspective than the rest of them, and if Reid saw something useful to the case from forty feet away from the police tape, Rossi wouldn't be surprised.

When he looks at Reid's face however, he doesn't see the curious gaze that usually accompanied his thoughtful trances. Instead he sees a vacant stare muted with terror, his mouth hung open slightly and his brow furrowed. Concern bubbled in Rossi's gut. "Reid?'

His inquiry gets Morgan's attention instead of Reid's, and he turned around to see what had caught Rossi's scrutiny, and upon seeing the distant gaze of his friend, started back toward them. "Reid?"

The whole team was looking now when Prentiss glanced from Reid back to the burning building in horror. "Oh god. It's the smell- burning fish guts."

Rossi felt far more confused than he was before as Hotch jogged back to Reid's side. "Burning fish? I don't understand."

"Oh." Morgan breathed, eyes turning back to his teammate.

Rossi looked to Hotch, hoping to be filled in. Hotch only shook his head minutely, eyes scanning over the crime scene and then raking over Reid once more. "I'll tell you later." mumbled with a fierce frown. "Prentiss, Rossi, speak to the officer who took the call and get some details for us." As he said so he stepped up to Reid's side and placed a firm hand on the kid's bicep, speaking his first name in a prolonged attempt to snap him out of whatever daze he had fallen into.

Rossi complied with the order and stepped away, but it did not extinguish the churning concern in his stomach. He was careful to keep the others in sight and saw that Hotch and Morgan had both taken ahold of Spencer's upper arms and were leading him back to the SUVs. Once they were out of sight, he turned to Prentiss.

"What's wrong with Reid?"

She pursed her lips, and he sees sorrow cross her dark eyes. "It's a long story. I'm sure Hotch will tell you... I'm not sure if I can yet."

That certainly didn't help deter the dark path his train of thought was taking. Prentiss was one of their more stoic agents, and something had happened before he rejoined the team that was bad enough to give Reid the Thousand Yard Stare and make Prentiss hesitant to remember.

When they finish getting the statement from the officer, Rossi hears Reid throwing up behind them, and he knows right then that he needed to know just what the hell had happened to his team before he came back

He doesn't get the chance to corner Hotch until late that night. He finds the man seated in a conference room, surrounded by files and cups of cold coffee, his head down and shoulders hunched but his pen unmoving on the paper in front of him.

"Haven't seen Morgan or Reid in awhile." Rossi starts as a way of greeting, setting down two cups of fresh coffee and pulling out the chair across from his friend.

"I sent them to the hotel. They weren't going to accomplish anything more tonight." Hotch keeps his head down a moment longer before sighing and finally looking him in the eye. The exhaustion there is more prominent than he was expecting, and he prepares himself for what he's about to ask. Instead he says- "Maybe you should head there yourself. All of this can wait until morning." He looks down pointedly at the files in front of them both. Their unsub ran on a month long schedule- they weren't in the biggest rush to catch him before he hurt someone again.

Hotch reaches forward for the hot coffee as a response, and Rossi relents. "I thought maybe you would want something a little stronger than coffee." He reaches into his inner jacket pocket and slid out a flask, setting it down between the two of them casually. The team rarely drank while on a case, and almost never did in a police station, but Rossi was sure that tonight they could make an exception.

After a moment of hesitation, in which Rossi could clearly see Hotch weighing the options in his mind, the younger man reached for the flask and poured a few ounces into his coffee before screwing the lid back on and handing it back. A few sips certainly wouldn't incapacitate him, and the hotel was only two blocks away. They were going to be walking anyway.

Rossi mirrored his movements and rocked his mug a little to mix the alcohol in with his coffee. Aaron spoke before he had the chance to put his thoughts together.

"Ask your questions."

Rossi nodded and took a sip before setting his cup down, clasped his hands together, and leaned forward. "What happened before I came back that made Reid react like that?"

Hotch nodded, like he needed the question to be spoken aloud in order for him to address it. He took another sip from his coffee before he spoke. "Two years ago we had a case in rural Georgia. A man was slaughtering people in their homes and leaving bible verses. I sent JJ and Reid to interview a witness named Tobias Hankel, and he happened to be the unsub. We didn't figure it out until it was too late. JJ and Reid had split up to try and find him, and he knocked Reid out and disappeared with him." He stopped for a moment and set down his coffee, his hands moving to the files in front of him where he shuffled them together, like his hands needed to be doing something while he spoke.

Rossi stayed quiet. The nature of their work was dangerous, and they had encountered somewhat similar situations since, though they had never lost trail of their teammates.

"Tobias had multiple personality disorder. He was acting as himself, his father, and Raphael, an archangel. Tobias was a junkie, abused by his father and mentally scarred. His father was a religious zealot who looked for any sins in a person to justify his need to kill them, and Raphael had no emotion, only acted as the slaughterer." Having run out of files to organize, Hotch finally leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, dark eyes staring at a spot over Rossi's shoulder.

"He beat Reid for two days with anything on hand, trying to get him to confess to sinning- he burnt fish livers over a fire as a way to keep away the devil. It's a smell you can't really forget."

Kidnapped from his team and hidden away to be beaten for days at a time by an unstable man? Yeah- that would give Rossi flashbacks too. He sat back heavily, mind struggling to turn as he tried to process that information. Reid was 26. Two years ago he would have been only 24- _twenty four years old. Rossi had just escaped the army at 24, but most people that age where just leaving college or trying to get started in the workforce. They were buying their first apartments, applying for their careers- Reid had been kidnapped and beaten._

"The father was the one who beat him, and when he shifted back into Tobias-" Hotch took a breath and reached for his coffee again. "He got it in his head that drugging Reid was the best way to get him through it. He'd drugged himself to survive his father, so he injected Reid with dilaudid, his drug of choice."

"Damn." The word escapes Rossi's mouth without realization. He set down his coffee and pushed it away from him. Drinking did not appeal suddenly. Being forced into a state of unawareness could be traumatizing- it was why hospitals hesitated to sedate anyone they thought they could talk down instead. Being drugged against one's will forced you to be taken care of by whoever happened to be around to look out for you- a crazed murderer, in Reid's case.

"We got two videos of Reid. In the first one Tobias's father made Reid pick someone to save out of a group of people he was going to kill. Reid told him no at first, but he didn't have much choice." He ran one hand over his hair before letting his hand fall back to his mug. "It was hard to watch. The second video though-" Rossi felt his stomach clench when Hotch had to actually stop talking. Very few things got to Aaron Hotchner. He'd seen the worst of what humanity could do itself, and still managed to smile at the end of the day.

Now however, Rossi could tell that he was shaken. To an outsider, Aaron may have just looked tired, but Rossi had been friends with Aaron for years and years, and he could see the pain in his eyes. His face wasn't as fierce as it tended to be normally- instead it was weary, like he was recalling the events explicitly.

"By the second video, Tobias had dosed Reid three times already. We got the video and he was beating Reid again. Between the drugs, stress, and shock- the beating triggered a seizure. He went into cardiac arrest and..."

Rossi couldn't meet his friend's eyes. He knows where the story is going. Reid had died. Had a seizure and died. On camera for them all to see. He feels suddenly hollow at hearing so, almost like someone had wrapped a hand around his throat and squeezed.

Spencer Reid was his teammate- a friend, family. He'd known the man for over a year, and within that year he had learned to appreciate him for who he was. He got off track, he spoke too much or not enough, he missed social cues, he wandered off, he didn't handle confrontation well, and he tended to be hopelessly awkward.

He was however, also one of the kindest people Rossi had ever known. He was fiercely loyal, he could empathize with everyone he met, he had a heart of gold, he left no one behind, he was humble, and above all he wanted to help and he _cared._

And that wasn't even mentioning the fact that the kid was a genius capable of scarily impressive feats that still managed to surprise them. Rossi had heard enough stories to know that Reid also had a habit of catching them off guard with an unexpected display of ability- be it in the interrogation room, on raids, or talking down a suspect.

He had learned to love Reid for who he was long ago, and accepted him as his family the same way he had accepted Prentiss, Morgan, Hotch, JJ, and Garcia as his family.

To learn that their resident genius had suffered so much at the hands of the unsub made Rossi feel ill.

"After two minutes of being out of frame, Tobias came back- as himself this time- and revived him with CPR." He was silent for a moment. "The team never really recovered from seeing that. I know because no one speaks of it. Ever. It's still fresh- never healed over." Rossi nodded, his mind whirling with the new information.

When he had arrived it was immediately apparent that Spencer Reid was the kid of the team. He was the youngest, that much was obvious, but he also had an innocence to him when he missed certain social cues, or had to be reminded to stick close, to focus, to stay on task. His lack of confidence played into that innocent role as well did his likeness of magic and other sneaky tricks.

Rossi knew he also had a wickedness in him that was required to work the job, but it was muted and overrun by his wish to help people and the want to learn as much as he could. He had always been curious what had made the team so protective over him- the innocent facade and his age had never really seemed to warrant their watchful eye- but hearing that they had watched their youngest member die on camera and been powerless to help- that would make him pretty damn protective too. Their behaviour made sense now at least, but Rossi wished it had come at a lesser cost.

"Tobias was gone as soon as he picked Reid off the ground. Raphael held a gun to his head- a revolver with one bullet- and told him to pick a member of the team to die." Rossi had to put his head in his hand at this. Asking Reid to pick the death of a stranger was one thing, but asking Reid to condemn a team member to death was something completely else. Besides his mother, the members of the BAU team were the only family that Spencer had.

"Reid told him no three times, and each time Tobias pulled the trigger. On the fourth time, Reid gave him my name, and gave us a clue on how to find him by quoting a bible verse. He was in a cemetery. Between that and a quote about poaching, his hints were probably the only reason we found him. It still impresses me to this day."

"For good reason. He was kidnapped and tortured for days and still managed to lead you guys to where he was being held. That's impressive." Rossi says, his eyebrows having shot up to his forehead. "Especially while drugged." Hotch nodded and sat forward finally. "So you found him. What happened to Hankel?"

"He's dead. By the time we got to the cemetery, Hankel had dragged Reid out into the graves... had him digging his own grave." Hotch stops again, eyes taking on a faraway look that goes past the conference room and beyond. "He was at his end game, and was about to kill Reid. We were maybe one hundred feet away, but he couldn't yell for us without alerting Tobias. He ended up distracting Hankel and getting the revolver. It only had one bullet, but when Reid fired it shot and he killed Tobias right before we got there."

Rossi frowned. Reid had ended up being the one to kill Tobias after all. That wasn't much of a rescue- he didn't blame the team of course. It wasn't their fault. It was just unfortunate that Reid had been forced to kill his kidnapper in order to save himself- it was a weight that he didn't deserve to carry, especially after having suffered so much at the man's hands.

He looked up once more when Hotch sighed and downed the rest of his drink. "He struggled with the drugs for awhile after that. Dilaudid is extremely addictive, and it took him several months to get completely clean. I never reported it." It's a silent message to Rossi to keep quiet about it, not that Rossi would, but this way there would be no misunderstanding.

Reid had been addicted to Dilaudid for months. That alone stood testament to how much the kid had suffered at Hankel's hands. Reid was one of the most stubborn people Rossi knew, and if he had lost his control enough to resort to something he knew was dangerous to his way of life, then the kid had truly struggled.

It made Dave's heart ache just thinking about their resident genius being in so much pain.

"How'd he get clean?" The question slips from his mouth without meaning to.

"On his own. He disappeared for four days and came back to work thinner and annoyed, but he also looked proud and the little nuances from the drugs disappeared. His anger left, he started rolling up his sleeves again, and he stopped shaking. It was a relief to everyone."

Rossi nodded absentmindedly. He wondered briefly how long Hotch would have let that go on. Turning Reid in would have destroyed him- broken the trust he had in the team completely, which would have left him to deal with the trauma all alone, which would have been a mistake. But if Reid had continued to destroy himself- taken increased risks, stop hiding it, stopped taking care of himself- Hotch would not have let Reid go down that path- but where was the line? When would Hotch had to step in?

Rossi blinked a few times to clear his mind. There was no reason to go down that train of thought. Reid had gotten himself clean. Had taken care of himself- Rossi shook his head. Reid had been kidnapped, beaten, tortured, and addicted to drugs- then managed to get himself clean by his own free will? Without losing sight of who he was? Sure- Rossi didn't have proof that Reid acted the same now as he had before he'd been taken, but when he saw the childish glee in his eyes when he shot a rocket across the bullpen or when he heard someone mention his favorite author or when he pranked Morgan with a loaded rubber band- Rossi had to assume that Reid had not lost view of who he was or the delight he found in learning and his job. He had gone through hell and dragged himself out and managed to stay true to himself.

Rossi was bloody impressed with the kid.

"What are you thinking?" Hotch's voice slipped into his thoughts, and he made eye contact with him.

"I was thinking about how impressed I am. He's... well, from what you described, he's been through absolute hell, and still he's not succumbed to it. He hasn't left the bureau, he quit the drugs, and he's still just... Reid. Brilliant, ridiculous Reid."

Hotch smiles at that, and after a moment, makes a decisive nod. "That he is. That he is."

It takes them another half hour before they finally leave thee precinct and head towards their hotel. They talk about a number of topics, but by the time Rossi is unlocking his room door and settling down for the night, he finds his mind keeps drifting back to their resident genius.

He knows he won't look at Reid the same way now, but he certainly won't see him as a victim. No, Reid had saved himself in multiple ways, all without letting it cloud over his life to darken his spirit. Spencer Reid had amazed him time after time, but now Spencer Reid most certainly had his unwavering respect.


End file.
